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Vance Slams European Allies, Likens Some to Cold War Tyrants; Louisiana Health Department says It Will No Longer Promote Mass Vaccination; Trump Orders Federal Agencies to Ditch Paper Straws. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired February 14, 2025 - 15:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Today the Trump administration took another step in its effort to end Russia's war with Ukraine, as Vice President J.D. Vance met face-to-face with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a security conference in Munich, Germany. In the lead-up to that critical sit-down, Vance used his speech at the conference to blast America's European allies. The Vice President criticized them for their immigration policies and accused some of them of not listening to their voters and suppressing voices they disagree with, even when as far as comparing some of them to Cold War tyrants.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh joins us now live from London. Nick, what more can you tell us about those comments from Vance and how they're being received?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I mean, look, it's extraordinarily odd to see the city of Munich, with all of its history with the Nazis in the 1930s, being used as a platform to essentially suggest that some of the most robust Western democracies are in fact tyrants themselves. J.D. Vance's speech went into suggestions that they were jailing opponents, that they were preventing reporters from doing their work and jailing them too. Even called into question Romania's recent decision to annul the first round of a presidential election because courts and the intelligence services had found evidence of Russian interference in the vote that they essentially felt meant the vote wasn't valid anymore, and indeed it had favored by a very narrow margin a far-right pro-Russian candidate.

So startling really to see the accusations he leveled, so many of them half-truths or entirely fact-free. We've since learned in fact that one of his meetings has been with the Alternative for Germany, AfD party's co-chair Alice Weidel, potentially on the sidelines of this summit here.

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And Vance also too trying to sow doubts into the validity period of electoral processes across these Western democracies.

These are U.S.'s key allies for decades and so it's remarkable to see President Trump's Vice President here using this platform not to try and outline ideas about a peace plan for Ukraine or make nervous European allies feel indeed in a venue like this that the United States has got their back and isn't about to abandon them, but instead suggest in an area very close to Eastern Germany, which was until not far ago run by a pro-Soviet regime and brutal indeed as it was, that in fact these Western democracies are themselves closer to totalitarianism.

And I beggar belief and we've indeed heard the German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius say that it's unacceptable to have these comments made.

So a remarkable moment certainly, one capped by meeting a German far- right party that Elon Musk himself has been exceptionally strong proponents of -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Nick, bring us up to speed on his meeting with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. How did that go?

WALSH: Yes, no major change in that and I think after the last week of frankly whiplash noises from the U.S. Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, who began his meetings in Brussels with European allies saying that Ukraine wasn't going to be a member of NATO or go back to its pre-2014 borders. Facts I think that all those allies knew but weren't going to reveal publicly given they're about to enter it seems into negotiations with Russia. Well those two ideas would be key planks of things they would offer Moscow as concessions to get them to stop the fight.

He then appears, Hegseth, to have gone back and said everything's on the table. So a real mess frankly in terms of what European allies and Ukraine are supposed to think there. We had no real elucidation as to the United States position in his meetings, Zelenskyy's meetings with Vance and indeed Rubio as well. So confusion still there.

The notion from J.D. Vance that he wants to continue to have optionality for any future negotiations. He's essentially saying what we've heard from Hegseth and even Keith Kellogg, the general who is Trump's Ukraine and Russia envoy, that it's really down to Donald Trump in the end how this peace plan looks.

The issue I think for Kyiv in all of this is they feel like we heard from Zelenskyy today that they are not front and center of this. Indeed they're anxious they're being left out of it and we're now seeing quite an increasingly robust relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. They've spoken at least twice since Trump came to power.

That's a huge sea change from the isolation for Moscow for the entire Biden administration since they invaded Ukraine unprovokedly by their own choice back in February 2022 causing significant damage to the country's east and casualties in its civilian population.

So interesting to see how Munich has been used by Vance to put this culture war message essentially out there in a European democracies who have for so long been American allies and calling to question the validity of their elections. And also interesting too that this moment which we thought in Munich was going to be so much about trying to explain to the world what the Trump administration's peace plan was.

Well we've had that vacillate back and forth it seems over the last four or five days and now in Munich Vance has really talked about it seems issues closer to his societal ideological beliefs and a lot of stuff that frankly wasn't true to an audience who were hoping for the more urgent worries about European security to be answered.

SANCHEZ: Nick Paton Walsh breaking that down for us from London. Thank you so much.

Coming up a big change in Louisiana. That state's Department of Health saying it will no longer promote mass vaccination campaigns. We'll discuss the impacts in just a few minutes.

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SANCHEZ: The Louisiana Department of Health says it will stop promoting mass vaccinations, instead urging individuals to consult their doctors about the risks and benefits. An internal memo obtained by CNN from the state's Surgeon General advises health workers to treat vaccines with nuance, noting the difference between seasonal vaccines and childhood immunizations.

I'd like to bring in the founder of Louisiana Families for Vaccines, Dr. Jennifer Herricks. Doctor, thank you so much for being with us. What do you expect is going to be the impact of this move to stop promoting mass vaccination?

DR. JENNIFER HERRICKS, FOUNDER, LOUISIANA FAMILIES FOR VACCINES: You know, it's a really worrisome step because when these clinics were active, they provided thousands of Louisianans with essential vaccines every day. So without them, the fear is that many families will not even be able to access routine immunizations. And I worry that we're going to see vaccination rates drop dramatically as a result. And then we're going to see increasing disease outbreaks.

SANCHEZ: The director of New Orleans Health Department says that her department is not going to abide by the state's directive. I wonder what you've heard from local public health officials and how they plan to handle this.

HERRICKS: Yes, you know, for those who can, like the New Orleans Health Department, I think it's so important. It's going to be important for other nonprofits, including our own, to really try to promote vaccinations and accurate information because even, you know, the Department of Health, their website now has misinformation on the website.

SANCHEZ: What does it have on it?

HERRICKS: So they released a statement kind of going along with this letter that was released about their new vaccine policy.

[15:45:00] The statements are purposely misleading. So they deceive the public by claiming that COVID vaccines don't prevent transmission when we know that they reduce transmission significantly, though not by 100 percent. They distort the truth, falsely stating that vaccines are liability-free, when in reality there's an entire federal program that ensures swift and fair compensation for vaccine injuries that are very rare, allowing claimants to even reject the settlements and then sue in civil court if they're not happy with that original settlement.

They also misrepresent the risk, making vaccines, you know, seem like they cause more harm than they do. We know that the risk from vaccines is exceedingly rare, but the adverse events that are caused by the infectious diseases they prevent are far more frequent and have severe long-term harm associated with them.

SANCHEZ: So doctor, what would be your message to parents who are skeptical about vaccinating their kids who welcome this decision?

HERRICKS: You know, I hope that those parents have a relationship with a pediatrician that they can go to and talk to about these concerns. And, you know, I know that that's part of the message from the Department of Health is that there should be better relationships between patients and doctors. But again, vaccines are one of the safest interventions that we have, and the role of public health is to both inform and provide access to preventive care.

And this is -- vaccines are one of the best and most cost-effective ways to do that and to significantly reduce the disease burden for families. So not doing that is really going to impact, especially those families who don't have a relationship with their doctor like that.

SANCHEZ: Dr. Jennifer Herricks, we have to leave the conversation there. Appreciate your time.

HERRICKS: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Just into CNN, Andrew Lester has pled guilty to shooting a Black teenager who rang the wrong doorbell at his home in 2023. As part of the plea deal, the 86-year-old will be sentenced on March 7th and faces up to seven years in prison. Then-16-year-old Ralph Yarl showed up on Lester's doorstep on the night of April 13th, 2023, after he mixed up the streets where he was supposed to pick up his siblings.

The shooting shocked the country and it renewed a debate about gun policies and race in the U.S. Yarl survived the shooting and has since graduated from high school.

Back to plastic, President Trump moves to ban paper straws from federal buildings. What environmentalists are saying about the move after a quick break?

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KEILAR: Paper or plastic. When it comes to straws, President Trump says it's not up for debate. He just signed an executive order to get rid of paper straws in federal agency buildings, reversing a Biden initiative that eliminated them.

When asked about its impact on the environment, here's how President Trump responded.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And I don't think that plastic's going to affect a shark very much as they're eating, as they're munching their way through the ocean.

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KEILAR: CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich is with us now. Vanessa, what are environmentalists saying?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, the federal government is the biggest purchaser of straws. So you have Americans, environmentalists, and even some of Trump's biggest critics agreeing on one part of this executive order, banning paper straws and bringing back plastic straws. Just listen to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show earlier this week.

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JON STEWART, THE DAILY SHOW: You -- OK, he's right on this one. He -- he is right on this one. Those straws are f***ing terrible. Objectively ter-.

I'm supposed to have some weird tissue paper dissolve in my mouth just because turtles can't figure out straws aren't food. No. Don't eat the tubes, you stupid turtles.

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YURKEVICH: So while paper straws are obviously much better than plastic straws, they still present some problems. They're a lot more expensive, and they also aren't really great for our health. They still have some toxic glues and chemicals in many paper straws.

And on the cost side, paper straws are much more expensive than plastic straws. So we have the straw industry now advocating for biodegradable straws. You see that they're less than three cents. Not much more than a plastic straw. So that is what the straw industry is pushing for right now. The best case scenario, though, Brianna, is reusable straws.

But that's not really effective for large federal agencies, museums, and schools. We know, though, that Starbucks, for example, they have gotten rid of straws completely. They now have this sippy cup, so that's an alternative. They do say that you can request a straw and it will be biodegradable. But the straw debate is raging on. But industry experts saying, hey, the best case scenario right now, and they hope the president is paying attention to this, is let's go biodegradable, not back to plastic -- Brianna.

KEILAR: We'll see if he's paying attention. Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you.

Talk about a big gulp. A father captures the moment that his 24-year- old son is briefly swallowed by -- good lord -- a humpback whale while kayaking. The incredible video next. We'll talk about it.

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SANCHEZ: And now, a whale of a tale that has a remarkably happy ending. A kayaker navigating rough waters off the coast of Chile's Patagonia region suddenly swallowed whole by a humpback whale last Saturday. Watch this.

His father was capturing the giant gulp on his cell phone and did not stop rolling the tape.

KEILAR: No, doesn't miss a beat. Like, it doesn't even shake, right? And then after a few terrifying seconds, boom, the whale spits him out. He's unharmed. The kayaker told CNN Espanol he thought he was going to die and that when he was inside the whale's mouth, everything got dark and it felt slimy. I think that's what I'd expect.

An experience like that might make some people think twice before going right back into those same waters. But when the father and son were asked if they would kayak again, they said in chorus, of course. But I love how the dad is like, I'm just going to keep holding this camera steady.

SANCHEZ: He also is yelling at him. Hold it, hold it, grab it, grab it. I'm not sure if it means agarralo.

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I'm not sure if it means grab the whale or what, but I feel like my dad would do that to me. He'd be like, this is an adventure, son.

KEILAR: Grab the boat, son? Maybe he meant grab the boat.

SANCHEZ: Hopefully.

KEILAR: But I love how the whales like, no thanks.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: No.

SANCHEZ: Have you ever tried raft before? KEILAR: Maybe a bigger kayak. We're going to need a bigger boat -- as someone once said.

SANCHEZ: Indeed. Thanks so much for joining us this afternoon.

KEILAR: "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now

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